As a beekeeper, I'm a strong supporter of cross pollination. After all, that's how people get some of their favorite fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Also in industry, "cross pollination" or the exchange of ideas from one industry to another, is how we get some of our best products and services.
And one of the best, most important components of any business is quality. When truly active in a business, it permeates departments and the full range of seniority.
Because Boeing is in the news so much (still!), and because they had such a stellar quality program, it seemed the perfect topic to learn from for Quality Month.
To start off, a great deal of discussion still surrounds Boeing regarding their quality disasters and fatalities, despite having ISO 9000 certification - their quality standard. Many say that because of Boeing's serious quality issues, ISO certification needs to change.
Hmmm.
If you take a look at Boeing's ISO 9000 list of failures, it reads like this:
Superficial Compliance vs. Genuine Quality
Ineffective Audits
Lack of Real-Time Quality Monitoring
Peel it back a layer and ask why those quality failures happened, and it boils down to:
Didn't care
Didn't care, and
Didn't care
You have to genuinely and apathetically not care to achieve things like superficial compliance, ineffective audits, and a lack of real-time auditing. (Dangerous attitude to have in a mill!) So why didn't they care at Boeing? What happened?
Sadly, Boeing didn't crumble to competition but to their own mistakes. In particular:
Boeing prioritized financial performance over engineering excellence.
This is also what brought down giants like Intel and General Electric. And it'll surely bring down more large businesses in time. (Hopefully none in the pulp and paper industry.)
Globalization is a part of this puzzle as well. As more companies grow globally, it's easier for the businesses to forget that actual people are in those "smaller departments" (which may be continent-sized), where financial performance is pushed over engineering excellence. And when engineering excellence is secondary, quality is always compromised.
Never good.
All that chasing after the dollar, and what happened? Boeing (and Intel and GE) prioritizing financial performance did not lead to better financial performance. They would have been far better off following their original policies of excellence, which led to high quality, and is how they got their stellar reputations to begin with.
The final reason for the quality drop at Boeing was that the company had no concern for where or even if parts were made in America at all. Boeing ended up relying on Japan for its most advanced engineering and manufacturing - the sort of advanced R&D that Boeing would have jealously kept for itself in Seattle in previous times. This shift was largely due to tariffs and subsidies.
Trade policies do matter.
And as papermakers well know, once something is no longer made in the US, it's almost impossible to bring back.
So not caring, prioritizing finances over all else, and sending their best work overseas was the triple-threat that sent Boeing's quality tanking.
We can draw two lessons for us out of this - have a culture valuing quality, and making sure financials don't chase only the dollar, leaving quality trailing behind.
Also, you now have some potentially interesting discussion points about tariffs and subsidies if you're so inclined.
Enjoy your November. |
